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Halflings
Quick and (very) dirty guide to playing the halflings in the first and minimal world, compared to vanilla dwarves: Basics: - Do not use "just play". That's a terrible idea. It's designed for dwarves. Design your embark carefully. Don't take booze. What you need is LOTS of seeds, wood, and hatchets if you're lazy. Having a herbalist and a grower is good for your survival. - You do not need alcohol, nor can you make it in the minimal world. You must have fresh water to drink at all times. Settling next to a river is the smart thing to do. In newer additions to DF from scratch you can brew alcohol and use it as a source of drink, but beware - it can give halflings hangovers leading to nausea. - To dig, you must first make a shovel. This takes a special reaction called "make wooden shovel" and consumes 1 wood. It is available at the craftsman's workshop. The relevant skill is wood crafting. It is used similarly to a metal pick. It's not available at embark due to DF's restrictions about items. - You can make your default equipment at the carpenter's from wood similarly to how dwarves make training equipment, except bows are made at a bowyer's shop and arrows at a craftsman's. You can also make all equipment out of metal, and bows and arrows from bone. If any of these reactions are not visible, re-download - they were accidentally unavailable for a while. - In the minimal world, you have only above ground crops. You have two options: pumpkins and flax. Flax can be made into (pricey) flax cloth and the seeds can be eaten when cooked. Pumpkins produce a lot of food and nothing else, except seeds after being eaten. Flax can be grown in spring and summer. Pumpkin grows in spring, summer, autumn. NOTHING grows in winter, beware. -- If you are playing with later additions to the mod, you will have other plants to farm. Hobbits can grow things underground as well. - Plants now take a realistic time to grow. You must plant crops at the start of a season to harvest them at its end. Plant yields are more abundant to compensate. - Halflings and their pets clean themselves of contaminants automatically once per day to preserve frame rate. This does not need water, nor does it take a job. - Halflings can and will throw hard rocks at anything they consider threatening. No item is needed, but the halfling must have at least one hand.. The range is 20 squares. These can do some damage. They also have a creature variation that allows them to occasionally do higher-damage roundhouse kicks when fighting with fists, but are still generally squishy in melee. - Halflings DO need to wear shoes. This is a problem because they couldn't make shoes until bugfix 2. As above, re-download mod to get newest version if issue Digging and working metal: - Halflings do not get any metal items during worldgen, but can still work metal in theory. This is very significant because DF requires items that are used for digging to be made out of metal, as well as anvils. - You can therefore never usually not - sometimes halflings will randomly have access to metals to make shovels but mostly not as of the latest version never embark with digging equipment, even though you can improve mining skill. To dig, you must first make a wooden shovel (see basics). - As halfling, you can never embark with an anvil in the minimal world. You can trade for one later after there is someone else to trade with, but you can also make one yourself. Halflings, shockingly, have figured out something dwarves never could: metal items can be made by non-forging methods without anvils. Currently you can only make anvils by this method. You must first process metal into bars at a smelter, and you must have fuel (halflings can never use magma). Then you can use the "cast crude anvil" to melt those metal bars into anvil shape. After you have an anvil, you can work metals normally and make your normal equipment out of metal. - If playing a later version, since laularukymo's turn, you are able to embark with an expensive iridium anvil if you want to. There's no benefit to this over a cast crude anvil. - You have five items of equipment in the minimal world (labeled as "small"): cudgels, hatchets, shovels, bucklers and short bows. These are worse than human-sized equipment, but you'll have to make do. There are only two items of clothing in the minimal world: dress shirts and short pants. This is bad, considering there are beasts in this world. Government: - Halflings start with a mayor. This is a settlement, not an expedition. Mayor demands are lower than for dwarves, in particular halflings never want armor stands or weapon racks. There is no other form of government - you will never see a baron or a monarch. - You may appoint doctors, record keepers, managers, military commanders and traders at the nobles screen. You may appoint and later remove as many of each as you need. They all need an office once appointed. - To use military, military commanders must be appointed first as nobles, then squads can be assigned in the military screen. The mayor can lead one squad himself. - Halflings have some natural skill in sneaking and growing, and learn these skills faster than vanilla dwarves. Depending on your preferences, this may mean they come with the hunting and growing labors enabled by default and those may be disabled as needed. Survival: - You are small. Very small, and this affects a lot of things. The way size works in DF, a mallard can occasionally kill a halfling - and your hounds are larger than you are. - To make matters worse, halflings have a "realistic" body plan with connecting ankles, knees, wrists, bony spine, and major arteries in the throat and organs. - You have bad equipment and your unique smoking pipes don't (yet?) help you survive. Avoid melee if possible. Use your bows and use your hounds. - Prepare in advance. You can't grow crops fast to compensate for bad planning. Herbalism helps a lot, because unless other plants are added to the world, wild flax and pumpkin are ridiculously common. - This is meant to be a challenging (but still usable) race, more faithful to an idea than easy to play. More user-friendly races like dwarves will come later. On the other hand, the unique abilities and more effective government do have their advantages. One major downside to the current world is that without a hostile civilization, all your 'fun" is going to come in one big package very late game, and 'til then it's just farming pumpkins.